[ringaroundthetx]

This is no different from billionaires that hold massive equity stakes in their own companies, including Zuckerberg.

> Yet the fortunes of Mr. McCaleb and Mr. Larsen are not nearly as durable as those of other people on the Forbes list given that the value of virtual currencies fluctuates wildly. If Mr. Larsen wanted to access his wealth by selling Ripple tokens for dollars, it would likely drive down the value of Ripple tokens — and his riches.

People keep trying to apply a different higher standard to cryptocurrency in order to prove why it cant function as legacy asset classes.

Honestly, I think its because people dont know how the equity/currency/commodity markets work and are synthesizing standards while watching crypto billionaires get minted on the fly to justify their missed opportunities.

In Ripple’s case, the founders are probably more liquid than other equity billionaires. Ripple traded 7 billion usd today, Facebook only 2 billion.

And I dont even like Ripple, but right now I have to fight ignorance outside of the crypto arena.

[Brede]

The difference is very simple.

If you buy all ripple tokens in existence, they are useless. If you buy all facebook stocks in existence, you own facebook.

[ringaroundthetx]

All ripple accounts require 20 xrp which cannot be moved so this is an impossibility to begin with

Xrp holders have some function in the network, I forgot

And you could name the price for anyone else that wanted xrp or to use the network

Although I would say Ripple’s XRP is not the settlement solution Id be looking for, I wouldnt say owning 99.999% of them makes it worthless

Owning all of a commodity doesnt make it worthless, even when that commodity is a unique collection of cryptographic signatures

[keymone]

if i have 20 ripple but can't spend them - how is that different from having 0 ripple?

[imtringued]

You gave someone else $40 for free.

[keymone]

right, i gave them to "open my account", now i have 20XRP that i can't spend - how is it different from having 0XRP that i can't spend?

[ringaroundthetx]

Thats not the point, the xrp being cannot be bought by one entity because there are already millions of addresses and this has a helpful effect on the network and was designed for this exact scenario

Read up on it yourself, I think its some form of staking or validating

Im not the evangelist of Ripple just because Im not succumbing to widespread ignorance and flawed analogies

[keymone]

last XRP can't be bought because they can't be spent. how is 20XRP that you can't spend different from 0XRP that you can't spend?

[ringaroundthetx]

Right its not, what does that have to do with my grandparent post

My point was that the ripple network wouldnt be useless for the entity that bought 99.99% because of the network structure, I’m not sure what your point is

Another user of the network would need to buy xrp from the majority holder, there’s nothing controversial about that. Diamonds function the same way for DeBeers except they have a much lower standard of utility until the owning entity created a new use for them.